Worlds Enough, and Time
by Minutia R
Summary: <html><head></head>Conrad goes back to Series Seven.  Christopher takes it badly.  Millie/Christopher/Conrad, and also Millie/Christopher.  Some implied sex, nothing explicit.</html>


I wasn't thinking—honestly—that soon I'd be giving parties at the castle for conclaves of mages and heads of state and immortal god-kings from other worlds, and I could do worse than get some practice on a more forgiving audience. I wasn't thinking what it might mean to be the wife of the next Chrestomanci; Gabriel had never been married, as far as any of us knew, and things seemed to run smoothly enough. In any case, I wasn't thinking of marrying Christopher, or marrying anyone.

Oh, I'd got a few offers since I finished school, despite having a figure like a sack of potatoes and no family that anyone in Twelve knew of. I won't pretend that my personality is too repulsive to attract a man, but none of them were from men who knew me well enough to know that. I could only assume that word had got around about my more-than-half-a-chest of diamonds. There was that Oxford wizard that Christopher used to play cricket with, who must have been at least thirty and always smelled faintly of garlic. And there was that younger son of that Duke who'd consulted Gabriel about a family curse. I'd been kind, and grateful, and even regretful—though hopefully not too regretful—and then I'd gone and described the proposals to Christopher and Conrad, complete with dramatic gestures and funny voices. They always made an appreciative audience. When I did the Duke's younger son's lisp, Christopher had laughed until he choked.

The truth was, we were all far too happy with things as they were to bother with thinking beyond them. At least, I was, and I know Christopher was, but Conrad was probably thinking ahead even then. He might have been the youngest of us, but he was always the most sensible.

And then there came that Sunday, when we were lying in the sun on the castle lawn, and I happened to see the grass through Conrad's fingertips. It was only the very edges of him, and only in direct sunlight, but he spent a long time talking to Gabriel in his office that night, and by the next week he didn't make any sound when he walked, and you could put a hand right through his arm if you weren't careful. There was no ignoring it anymore—it was time for Conrad to go home.

At that point, the only thing I was thinking was how terribly I was going to miss Conrad, and how useless Christopher was being about it all; but there was nothing more useful I could think of to do than giving Conrad a really nice sending-off party.

I only had a few days to organize things, and I couldn't keep all the preparations from Conrad—Conrad is hard to keep secrets from. He wasn't surprised when he came down from the castle with his valise over his shoulder to find all of us waiting on the patio overlooking the lawn. But his face did light up satisfyingly when he saw the model of the Sheffield Glacier that Jason and I had worked on all the previous night, with the miniaturized plants growing on the slopes of the mountains around, and tiny skiers weaving between them. Then half a pound of rice fell on his head out of the clear sky.

"That's for weddings, Henrietta," Michael murmured.

"Is it? I thought it was for good luck generally," said Henrietta.

Conrad grinned and flicked grains of rice out of his hair. "I'll take it in the spirit in which it was meant," he said.

"Where is Christopher, anyway?" said Henrietta. No one else would have said it. There was an awkward silence.

Conrad's expression didn't change. "I imagine something urgent came up. Gabriel keeps him pretty busy nowadays," he said. Gabriel, who was helping himself to some of the spiced cheese sandwiches, raised his eyebrows, but didn't contradict this. Which was more tact than he generally chose to exercise. Maybe he was finally mellowing, at age eighty-something. "We said goodbye earlier," Conrad went on. "It's all right."

Michael put something on the phonograph, fast-paced, with strings and lots of horns, and started to dance with Miss Rosalie. Conrad set the valise down to admire the model glacier—and, probably, because it was a real effort to carry, as insubstantial as he had become—and pepper Jason with questions about its construction. Bernard got drawn into the conversation, and soon he and Jason were arguing heatedly about some technical detail or other, and Conrad found himself a dish of peach ice cream and a deck chair. He was alone for the moment, so I wandered over and perched on the arm of his chair. "Something came up?" I said.

He sighed. "What came up was, I told Christopher I didn't want him to come if he was only going to be miserable," he said. "It's a lovely party, Millie. What would be the use of making it awkward for everybody?"

"The two of you didn't have a row, did you?" I said. I didn't think even Christopher would be that stupid, but.

"No, of course not," said Conrad. "He just—we said goodbye. Privately."

"Hm," I said. There was something about that private conversation that Conrad wasn't telling me—and I don't just mean the sweaty and grunting details, although Conrad can be surprisingly shy about those, when out of bed and fully clothed. The dish of ice cream sat barely touched at his elbow, which was more than odd. Even if he was more upset than he let on, even if he and Christopher had rowed, the only time I'd known Conrad to resist peach ice cream was when he'd caught that awful cold, and he—I actually gasped. "You can't taste anything, can you?" I said.

He shrugged apologetically. "I can tell that it's sweet," he offered.

"Oh no," I said. "All your favorite foods, and you—it's worse than torture. Why didn't I think?"

"Millie, don't worry about it," he said.

Right. Here was Conrad leaving home, and everyone he'd known for the past six years, and Christopher—I shouldn't be making _him_ reassure _me_. "All right, then, I won't," I said. "Do you want to dance?"

So we danced. It was a fast, modern one, without much touching—not the sort of dance that had been covered in the curriculum at school—and I had to keep sneaking glances at Michael and Miss Rosalie to see how it was supposed to go. But then Henrietta and Bernard started dancing, and they're both terrible dancers, so there was no way I could feel self-conscious. It was a few happy, breathless minutes before Henrietta stopped, and conjured a pen and paper, and announced, "I'm getting a letter from Elizabeth."

_Dear Conrad,_ Henrietta wrote, as we all clustered around the table where a plate of cream cakes had been quickly swept aside, _I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your party, but my new aunts say that I mustn't even think of travelling in my condition. Which is nonsense, but I find that if I don't try to get along with them, things quickly become very loud at Casa Montana._

_I can't believe you're leaving already, and that the next time I visit the castle you won't be there to take a photograph of me when I least expect it! But I'm sure you'll be very successful at your job and studies in Seven, and will make Gabriel and the rest of us proud._

_Give my love to everyone, and have a safe journey and best of luck always._

_Your friend,_

_Elizabeth Montana_

_P.S. I think Conrad is a splendid name, but Antonio keeps trying to persuade me that Giuseppe is nicer. We shall see._

"Oh," said Conrad, and swallowed. "Wow."

"I shouldn't get too choked up about it," said Bernard. "She's going to have a girl."

"How would you know?" said Jason. "You just found out about it like the rest of us."

"It's basic handwriting analysis," said Bernard. "If you look at the crossbars on the T's—"

Just then, Mordecai came up from the lawn, where he and Flavian had been setting up the gate to 7E. "Gate's up," he said. "Now—well, sometime within the next seven-and-a-half minutes—or never."

We all trooped down to the lawn. Jason carried Conrad's valise. Flavian had sighed about the tinsel and balloons that Henrietta and I had insisted on hanging on the gate components, but he'd worked them into the spell anyway, and the gate looked bright and brave and cheerful. I was _not_ going to start bawling.

Gabriel gave Conrad a couple of very impressive-looking letters of introduction to the King and the Dean of the University at Ludwich, and said that he knew Conrad would do well. There were manly handshakes all around from Flavian and Mordecai and the boys, and promises to visit from Jason, who was planning a tour of the worlds. Miss Rosalie thumped Conrad on the back, and Henrietta stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. I hugged him. It was like hugging an armful of cloud. I put forth an effort, and felt his chest against my cheek, his arms on my back. They felt nice. If Conrad and I had always kept Christopher between us, it was because Conrad has no particular use for girls, not because I couldn't fancy him.

"Good luck. Best luck," I said. "Oh, I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you, too," he said, very soft. "Be well. Take care of Christopher."

"As much as anyone can," I said.

"Tell him I love him," he said. "Tell him I miss him already."

"I will," I said.

"And tell him I never . . . tell him I wish . . . tell me he's going to be all right," said Conrad.

"He will," I said. Oh Christopher, what did you _say_? "And so will you."

Conrad made an effort to match mine, and for just a moment I could smell him, like I always used to until ten days before, clear like mountain air and sharp like a pine forest. "I love you, Goddess," he whispered.

"I love you, Grant," I whispered back. Then he was a cloud again, and then he was gone, through the gate.

I turned around, and marched back into the castle, and up to Christopher's room. It was locked, physically and magically, but I didn't let that bother me. Christopher was looking out the window overlooking the lawn—which the window in his room didn't normally do. I had had about my fill of his mooning. "Conrad says to tell you," I said, "that he loves you and he misses you already."

Christopher didn't look at me. He stood up, stepped between his old trunk and the fireplace, and disappeared. "Also Elizabeth sends her love and is going to have a baby," I told the empty room. "Bother all men anyway."

I took my murderous mood to the library, and pulled up a chair next to a shelf of the slushiest romances I could find. Two and a half books in, the gong sounded, and I blinked muzzily, dumped Proudfoot and Magwitch off my lap, and went down to dinner. Christopher wasn't there.

"Did you _really_ send Christopher off somewhere, Gabriel?" said Henrietta.

"No," said Gabriel shortly. Jason and Michael exchanged a look.

"Right," I said. "I'm going to find him. With your permission."

"Christopher's temper will keep, I imagine," said Gabriel. "But dinner won't." That wasn't a no, so I bit my lip and didn't argue with it, but dinner at the castle had never seemed so long.

Afterwards, I went back to the library and hunted down Proudfoot. I may not have been travelling the worlds since I could walk, and I may not have nine lives, but I did have an Asheth Temple cat.

"I'm only doing this," I told her, "because I promised Conrad I'd look after Christopher." She stretched, and flicked her tail, as much as to say that she was leaving a life curled on the chair for me to use only because I was a silly human, and she was in an obliging mood. Neither one of us fooled the other. Christopher had been Proudfoot's first friend in Twelve, and his fingers knew all the best places behind her ears, and along her neck.

And if it had been me, running across the worlds in my blind misery—well, it had been me, when I was fifteen. And Christopher had fetched me back.

Using Proudfoot's life meant I could use Proudfoot's nose, and smells carried well in the damp air of the World's Edge. Not that I needed to pick up Christopher's scent to guess where he had gone. And you'd think I'd remember to at least take a heavy shawl along when I go spirit travelling, but somehow I never do. Christopher, by the smell of things, had stood underneath the Great Glacier for hours, but I found it hard to control my shivers by the end of the ten minutes it took me to pick up his trail again.

Luckily, it seemed that even Christopher had got cold eventually, because the next place he had gone to was Nine, and I was warm again almost immediately. He had gone through the whole series, and slightly different versions of the same riotous fungus forest flicked past me dizzyingly as I followed his track.

I felt Christopher's presence in 8H; I looked up at a family of dragons winging over the hills, and knew that Christopher was looking at them, too. Then he felt mine. He went still, and winked out again. I dashed after him, over another world-boundary, and had to grab hold of a pylon as a ring-train tore past. The other people on the platform stared—not at me, but at some spectacular thing that had apparently just happened at the opposite end of the station.

"Christopher, stop!" I called, but he was gone already.

His steps were surer now; there was one series he could go where I couldn't follow him. I hurried to catch him before he made it to Ten and I had to bring reinforcements from the castle. Then he turned an abrupt right angle, and I did too, with a sickening lurch.

I was on a beach, bright pale yellow fading to dull brown near the water, which was where I had come out. The sky was clear and the sun almost directly overhead, but there was a cool breeze blowing in from the sea and I wished again I'd brought warmer clothing. But Christopher was nearby, and not moving; I started walking again, guided more by his overwhelming presence than the pointed, precise prints of his shoes on the wet sand. Another minute, and I saw him, and felt a fresh flash of irritation. He _must_ have known how handsome he was, looking out over the waves with his hands in his pockets, the breeze fluttering his hair and blowing back his coat.

I thought he was going to disappear again—I figured he'd only stayed in one place so long so I could admire his pose—but he didn't, and when I was close enough to hear, he spoke.

"He wouldn't take my life," he said.

"What?" I said.

"I thought, if Gabriel's life fixed you in Twelve, one of mine could do the same for Grant," he said. "I've still got a couple of spares. But he said no."

I tucked my hands into my armpits, and it wasn't just the breeze. "Gabriel gave his life to Asheth because mine was forfeit," I said. "It's not remotely the same. I doubt it would even have worked."

"I'd have made it work," said Christopher. He looked at me finally. His face was red and blotchy—not handsome—he'd been crying, but he wasn't anymore. Maybe that was why he'd been willing to stop. "Then I said, if he wouldn't stay in Twelve, I'd go to Seven with him. He said, what would I do in Seven, be a valet? I said, anything. But he said no."

"Christopher," I said. I put my arms around him. He was shaking.

"Goddess," he said, "will you marry me?"

I let go of him quickly, and sat down on the sand with a thump. "You can't be serious," I said. "You make me chase you across a dozen worlds, you tell me that you were about to leave everything—leave _me_—to run off to Seven with Conrad, and then you ask me _that?_"

"I hate losing people," he said, sitting beside me. "I'm useless at it. You may have noticed."

"I noticed," I said.

"So," he said. "Can I keep you? Please?"

I took his hand. It was Christopher's familiar hand, broad warm palm, long clever fingers. "First of all," I said, "I wasn't planning on going anywhere. I can't go back to Ten, as you pointed out."

"I know," he said.

"Second," I said, "getting married won't stop us quarreling. It won't stop us changing; it won't stop us dying. There isn't any magic that can do that. Or if there is, we saw it in Eleven, and it wasn't very nice."

"I know," said Christopher, in a smaller voice. His fingers tightened around mine.

"Thirdly," I said, "running away from me across the worlds is a _bloody stupid_ way to convince me that you love me and can't live without me."

"I know," said Christopher. He turned my hand over, and began to trace the lines on my palm, then he looked up at me again. His eyes were the same bright black ones I'd first seen across the courtyard of the temple, so many years ago. "I can't offer you anyone but myself. And I, as Grant is so fond of pointing out, am often a twit. But I do love you. Will you?"

The breeze picked up, and I shivered, and Christopher put an arm around me, a gesture of protection so automatic that I barely noticed it anymore. Once I was the protector of nine worlds—well, sort of—and I was never cold. But I would never be the Living Asheth again. I wasn't Millie, the Pluckiest Girl in School, anymore. And I would never fall giggling out of Christopher's bed at the castle—a bed far too small for three—while Conrad desperately tried to muffle his laughs in Christopher's shoulder. You can't go back; you can only go on.

But then—when I was five years old, I could imagine no fate more wonderful than to be the incarnation of the Goddess, golden as a statue, her holy mark on my foot and her power at all twenty of my fingertips. Sometimes _on_ c an pleasantly surprise you.

"Yes," I said.

Christopher grinned. It was his dangerous grin. "Will you stay in Five with me?" he said.

I laughed. "_No_, Christopher," I said. "We ought to be getting back. Henrietta's been asking after you. Gabriel is being gruff, but I think he's really worried. I know Jason and Michael are."

"And Bernard?" said Christopher.

"Oh, well, you know Bernard," I said. "'You'll only encourage Christopher, chasing after him when he's in a snit like this. Leave him alone, and he'll come home, as Little Bo Peep said. Does anyone know an African mammal, starts with two A's, not aardvark?'"

"Aardwolf," said Christopher absently. He stretched back on the sand. "We don't have to go back _right_ away, do we?"

"Well," I said, hitching up my skirts and rolling over on top of him. "Maybe not right away." The breeze was still cool, but my blood was hot, and so were Christopher's hands on my waist. The air smelled of kelp, tangy, and Christopher's lips tasted of salt, and _on_ was working out fine, thus far.

The next day, we wrote to Conrad, to tell him we'd got engaged. Christopher asked him to be his best man. I was afraid Conrad might be offended, but he probably would have been more offended if Christopher hadn't. Our wedding night, one year later, was almost like old times, but Conrad had to go back the next morning—a day in Twelve and he was already looking a little faded around the edges. And it wasn't long before he found a nice fellow of his own, that he could keep: a horticulturist named Lars, blond, with improbably broad shoulders, whom Christopher in his more absent-minded moments still insists on referring to as Lawrence.

And last year, after the 262nd Council of Bishops in 7E, Christopher was finally able to repay the favor, and stand as Conrad's best man. It was a lovely wedding, and both grooms were radiantly happy.

Christopher and I are happy too. We have two wonderful children, and two lovely not-exactly-our-children, and one delightful griffin. We still save worlds on a regular basis, one dinner party and one stack of paperwork at a time, and we love each other very much.

They say that politics is the art of the possible, and after twenty years of giving parties for conclaves of mages, heads of state, and immortal god-kings from other worlds, I've come to believe it. I think it must be true of marriage, as well.


End file.
